My Golden Knight
by dancewithdragons
Summary: "I prayed for you," she whispers with the wind. "I prayed for a hero to save me, a golden knight." An alternate universe in which Jaime Lannister rescues Sansa Stark. (Rated T- One Shot)


When he sees her, he first thinks of Catelyn Stark.

Her long brown curls tumble past down her shoulders, rough and wind-licked. Her skin is pale as the snow that falls, and her eyes are as bright as a blue moon. She is wearing a dark traveling cloak over a simple gown of grey. Even in this effortless dress, she looks elegant. "My lord," she greets him, dipping into a low curtsey. When she comes back up, she can barely look him in the eye. She turns to the wench and curtsies again. "My lady," she says. Her voice is blank and dull.

The salt-and-pepper haired Petyr Baelish steps between them, eyeing Jaime suspiciously. "You must be tired," he says, offering a firm smirk. "Please, allow my servants to escort you to your chambers."

He looks over to where the wench stands, wondering if she notices the girl as he does. The sandy-blonde looks oblivious, however, as she's lead down the hall to a small room. He is quartered in a chamber beside hers. When he looks back, he sees the girl pinned to the wall by their host, her eyes down and her lips frowning. The image of her looking at him in a sideways glace down the hall remains as he falls asleep.

The next day comes quickly, and Jaime watches for the girl, Alayne. She is in the great hall, putting a spoon into a bowl of porridge and eating, delicate bites of course. She is wearing a light blue gown today. Her curls, tumbling down her back, are tinted red in the candlelight and he once again sees an image of the woman he'd made the promise to, so many years ago.

She is met by Baelish. "Father," she greets him, putting down her spoon. The small man's grey-green eyes find Jaime's before he replies, and when the girl sees him she rises and leaves the hall.

"Lurking in hallways can make for curious behavior," says the man, his mockingjay pin gleaming.

He frowns, his golden hand tapping at the pommel of his sword. Baelish scurries to catch up with his bastard daugther and Jaime goes to find the wench. She'll be interested in his theory.

"Impossible," she says shaking her head. Short, straw-like hair cracks like a whip. "We found Sansa Stark. She's on her way to Winterfell as we speak."

Jaime smacks his gilded hand on the desk. "This girl is Catelyn reincarnate, you blind bat! Haven't you seen how Baelish protects her- from us especially! She's Sansa, I'm sure of it." His voice is sneering, green eyes ablaze.

The wench was quiet for long before she speaks. "I will ask Lord Baelish," she says, rising. Jaime pushes her back into her seat.

"If we ask Baelish we'll get a knife in our throats and he'll hide her away." He gathers himself up and stands straight "We need to get her alone, talk to her ourselves."

Jaime waits for Alayne to come down the hall, hiding in the shadows. When he hears the familiar clicking of her boots and catches a glimpse of the the sea-green of her gown, he reaches out and pulls her into the dark of the hall. "Please," she pleads, trying to pull away, but Jaime's grip is too strong. "I'm late to meet my father, he'll send someone for me," she says firmly.

He pins her to the wall, much like her father did the first night. "He's not really your father," Jaime says quietly. "I know who you are, Sansa. I can take you home, keep you safe."

Her blue eyes are full of pain and fear, and her long brown hair catches the light so gently, turning copper-red. She is beautiful, he realizes. Her nose is pink from the warmth of the castle, her cheeks pinker. She has a natural color in her lips that makes him think of rose petals. "I am Alayne," she whispers. "I am the natural daughter of Petyr Baelish. I am Alayne Stone, not Sansa Stark." She is broken, defeated. Too scared to say it, but it's in her eyes. She wants to believe him just as much as she wants to cut his throat, for he is a Lannister and a cripple and for as much as he can promise his rescue of her what proof does he have?

He lets her go, and she doesn't look back as she hurries down the hall. She is right; she is not Sansa Stark. But she is not Alayne Stone, either. He doesn't know what to make of the girl, whose skirts flow behind her like she is ethereal.

When he wakes to weight pressing on the edge of his bed, it's far past midnight. There is a single candle burning, flickering in the darkness. He sits up and rubs his eyes, staring into the black of his bedchamber. The figure on the end of his bed is small, long ringlets giving way to it's identity. "Why are you here?" he asks, raising a brow.

The girl lifts her hood and lets it flow to her shoulders, revealing her face. She looks up at him through heavy lashes. "You said you can take me home," she says, reaching a hand out and taking hold of his cheek, cupping it so gingerly. "Your family betrayed mine. Why should I trust you?"

He feels dirty at her angelic touch. "You wouldn't have risked coming if you didn't trust me," he points out. When he leans into her, they're close enough to kiss. Her breath hitches. "I made a promise to your mother," he tells her quietly, "let me honor that promise. Let me take you home."

She escapes his room unseen that night and he finds himself unable to sleep once more, the resonating feel of her hand on his face making his cheek tingle.

Dawn breaks early, and Jaime and the wench are packing their things back into their sacks, ready to ride out. "It's a shame that you're leaving so early," says young Robert Aryyn, who has taken a fancy to Brienne, for how high he can be when he sits atop her shoulders.

"I bid you safe travels," says an all-too-smug Petyr Baelish. He is grinning from ear to ear. _He thinks we've fallen for the decoy girl, but we're one step ahead_, Jaime thinks to himself.

They gallop down the mountain, dust kicking up under the hooves of their steeds. It is a beautiful escape.

When they are safe, with no eyes around, Jaime opens the cart that is attached to his horse. She is inside, looking up at him with those big doe-eyes. He lifts her out gently and sets her down. Stretching, she looks around. The wench stares at her in awe and Jaime kicks the cart from his stallion before mounting once more. He reaches a hand out for her and she hesitantly accepts, leaning into him when she's comfortably atop the horse.

Her hair is freshly dyed brown, and he can smell the perfumes in her curls, sprawled out on the ground beside him. She is sleeping soundly, as is the wench across from them, their fire long grown cold. Jaime is awake still, though, watching over this innocent girl. She has her hands tucked under her head, her gown carefully covered by a thick, velvet cloak of navy blue. Her pale skin is a stark contrast to the deep brown dirt she lays on. He tentatively touches her jawline, tracing it with a finger.

When she opens her eyes and looks up at him, he slinks away and lays down for the night.

The following days are long and testing. The girl is quiet and the wench is just as well. They don't stop at inns, rather, they go to farm houses and rest there, eating with small families that won't need to remember a tall knightly woman, a crippled man, and a beautiful stranger.

It's only two weeks into their travel when she asks him. "Why," she questions quietly in the dead of night, the wench already fast asleep. "You already had a Sansa to take home to the North. Why weren't you content with just that?"

Jaime rakes his hand through his hair, heaving a deep sigh. "I promised your mother that I would bring her daughters to her. To home. That whore's daughter wasn't Sansa Stark. You are."

Her blue eyes glisten in the firelight, her dyed-brown ringlets glinting. She moves to sit closer to him, bringing a hand up to his cheek like she had done in the Eyrie. "I prayed for you," she whispers with the wind. "I prayed for a hero to save me, a golden knight." Her childish wishes make him shift, frowning. She isn't looking at his frown, though, she's caught on his eyes. With the flickering light twinkling on her lips and a golden glow upon her skin, she looks like a dream. He leans in and his mouth presses ever so lightly on hers. The way she melts into him makes him shiver, and he pulls away, turning from her. There will be no warmth between them this night.

The following day, she doesn't spare him a glance, and fains to ride with the wench. _We're only a week from Winterfell,_ Jaime thinks to himself, _just a week until I leave her in the North and can return to Cersei_. It must be because he misses his sister, his other half, he tells himself, but there is a seed of doubt in his belly that cannot be ignore.

They don't speak again until three nights passed, and once again Brienne lay snoring under a tree while they sit alert by the fire. She puts her hands to the flames. Jaime notices to red of her curls is peeking through and the brown is fading. "Winterfell is a ruin," she says quietly, for their ears only, "the North is scattered and burned to the ground. My family is gone, blown away like wind. What will I have when I return? My home has been gone since the day I left for King's Landing."

"You will have Winterfell, your family's seat. You will have all of the northerners to support you and help you rebuild what's been broken." Jaime's words are as soft as a mother's kiss.

She looks up at him and he can see the tears in her eyes. "What is Winterfell without warm walls? Without my mother and father standing over the deck to watch us play? Without my brothers and sister to throw snowballs at? What is Winterfell without a family to share it with?" Her hand touches his so lightly he barely notices.

He wants to tell her that it will be alright and that she's a Stark of Winterfell, she'll always have a home in the North. But he can't bring himself to lie. Nothing would ever be alright for this girl, this innocent girl that has always been a pawn, and without her ancestral seat there is little for her to return to. Instead, he runs his golden hand through her hair and pulls her in. Her lips find his this time, and he forgets about everything but the feel of her hands on him, the taste of her tongue in his mouth.

They are entangled when he wakes the next morning. The wench is still sleeping, and he carefully removes himself from the girl. She's awake, though, and sits up to look at him. He knows what they did last night, and he knows they cannot do it again. But she doesn't appear to understand the way he does. Her smile lights up her face in a way he hasn't seen on anyone in a long time, and she reaches out for his hand- not his left, but his right, the one made of gold.

She rides with him as they travel that day, and her hands roam his thighs, his arms as they wrap around her to reach the reins. Brienne notices it all.

"You be careful with her," she says to him as the girl makes water by the near stream. "She's a Stark of Winterfell, not some tavern wench." Jaime knows that all too well, but he can't help the way his stomach knots when he catches sight of her scrubbing the dye from her hair. They are getting closer to Winterfell, and her red hair will be an essential asset to rallying the North for her. With her wet crimson curls draping over her shoulder and her lips slightly parted, she looks otherworldly.

He forces himself to look away before she sees him.

They reach the gates of Winterfell within days. It's a ruin, she was right. The towers are crumbling and it's burned to a crisp. He expects her to cry, to scream, anything. But she only stands there, strong as a pillar, taking in the sight of it. "This was my _home_ once," she says, very softly.

She is met by the northern lords, who all compliment her on her likeness to the late Lady Catelyn. They say they knew the other 'Sansa' to be a decoy, that this was the true Stark girl. She looks at him with a reserved sadness when they talk of her father, and how they were sorry for her losses. Because none of them can know, and even though she thinks him to have an idea, Jaime knows least of all. He's lost none in these war times, none but himself.

When he's saddling his horse to leave she grabs him. She was lurking in the shadows, covered in a roughspun cloak. "Don't leave," she asks, tears in her eyes. "I have nothing here, no one. You're my only family."

"I'm not your family," he tells her, removing himself from her small, grasping fists. "I was just your escort."

She is hurt, he can see it in her eyes. "After all our time traveling, all our time hiding together? All that I've shared with you... Have you forgotten that night..."

He hasn't forgotten, nor can he ever forget. He can still feel her persistent hands guiding him, touching him. "We have to leave that behind," he says carefully. "I can't stay here, and you can't be seen sneaking about, conspiring with a Lannister. Go, little bird, fly to your nest."

Her mouth is agape as if she recalls the pet name from somewhere, years ago. She licks her lips and looks down, his rejection pulsing through her veins. "Farewell, Ser Jaime," she says as she slips back into the shadows, "my golden knight."

It's not until years later that Jaime allows himself to think of her again, when there is a surprise visitor in the night. He bids them enter, though his westermen are cautious. It is an old man, small and bearded. "Howland Reed," Jaime recalls. He remembers the man being at Winterfell, when he accompanied the royal family. _So many eons ago it seems_.

"Yes, my lord," he says, happy at the recognition. He remembers himself when one of Jaime's men asks the reason for his presence. "I'm here in behalf of Lady Sansa," he tells them, grave.

He raises a brow, trying hard to mask the way his stomach flips at the sound of her name. "How does the lady fare?" he asks casually, making his way to seat himself on the Casterly throne. He is the ruling lord now, and must remind himself to put use to the lord's chair.

"Lady Sansa has passed," Howland Reed says quietly, and Jaime's heart drops. _Passed? It cannot be true_. But the way that Lord Reed's eyes mist make it clear.

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, remembering her gentle touch and sweet tongue. "Is that all the news you needed to share, Lord Reed?" Somehow, though he tries desperately, his voice turns to that of stone on steel.

Howland Reed beckons for a something, someone, and Jaime leans forward to see a child appear. It is a young girl, with curly red hair and pale skin, just like the girl he'd escorted to Winterfell. Her eyes are different, though. They are green and glittering like emeralds. "It may be a lot to comprehend, my lord... But this is Lady Sansa's daughter. And yours."

Jaime could already see it in her. In the way she eyed him levelly, careful as a lion, in the way she stood tall and proud, even in front of _him_, a man of great power, a stranger. _Her father_. She is only five years old and already she is a calculating lady. "What is her name?" he asks.

"Catherine Snow," says the small girl, looking up at him. Her voice was Sansa's, as was everything else- but for her eyes. He saw a piece of himself staring back at him through her eyes, in a way he'd never seen in Joffrey, Myrcella, or Tommen. "For my grandmother," she tells him, one of Sansa's smiles lighting up her face.

His heart is being cut, sewn together, and cut again with each new thing about this young child. _Catherine, my daughter. Her daughter_. She will be a Snow no longer, he decides. She never should have been. She has always been his, and a Lannister she will remain.

He dismisses Howland Reed and all his other bannermen. "Tell me, little Catherine. How did your mother die?" he asks when they are alone. She has pulled up a chair to sit in front of him, her tiny legs barely reaching off the edge of the seat.

She frowns. "Mother was unhappy," she says, "but they wouldn't tell me anything else." The child's eyes begin to swell up and she bursts into tears. Jaime doesn't know what to do when she crawls into his lap and cries into his doublet.

Instead of pushing her off, he holds her, kissing the crown of her head. He finally understands the way Sansa felt, when all those northern lords gave their condolences about her losses. He finally feels it. The pain that burns through his body and makes him hollow inside. The hurt of a thousand pricks of a knife in his chest. He has finally lost someone; the only one. He clutches his daughter tight, this last piece of the girl he once knew, and she cries until she falls asleep in his lap.

When he carries her up the staircase in his arms and to his chamber, setting her down on his bed, he feels her with him. Not Catherine, who snores softly in his arms, but her mother. He hears her voice, sweet and solemn. "Farewell, Ser Jaime," she says, and it's so familiar that it makes him cry, "my golden knight."


End file.
